Why Work In The Public Arena

There are many ideas on Christian involvement in politics... some favorable and some not. I am sure most are sincerely held but not all are correct... or are they. It may be like eating meat or keeping the Sabbath.

So it would seem to be with involvement in the public forum. Some are called to it in a very visible way and others don't feel comfortable doing it themselves. I would urge these to at least support people willing to enter the arena and absorb the criticism and, at times, outright lies that are flung at them when they stand for things we know to be right. The enemy tries hard enough to destroy such people, their own brothers and sisters do not have to help.

Some believe in a dual citizenship, that being heaven and earth with our primary responsibility to our heavenly citizenship. This has been around a while. However, I have to think back to a course I had in college, called "Man in God's World" that broke down that separation. We didn't look for a theocracy or any kind of religious state, but looked at life from the perspective that everything in a Christian life was meant to honor God and that the Christian represented Him in everything we do. We can't breakdown our existence into the strictly physical or spiritual. The fact is that we are spiritual beings living in a physical world...

We need to remember the words of Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.